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Victory to keep run going

Melbourne Victory will take confidence from their strong record against the competition's top four sides when they host Gold Coast United at Etihad Stadium on Saturday night, according to midfielder Grant Brebner.

Melbourne Victory will take confidence from their strong record against the competition's top four sides when they host Gold Coast United at Etihad Stadium on Saturday night, according to midfielder Grant Brebner.

Fifth-placed Melbourne's 1-0 defeat of Gold Coast at Skilled Park back in August is one of three wins they've achieved against teams placed higher on the table.

The problem for the Victory is that they haven't been able to reproduce that form consistently.

Back-to-back wins have eluded them, but Brebner believes Melbourne can set things right on Saturday night coming off last week's 2-1 win over Adelaide.

"It's not been spoken about, but we're obviously aware of that as a team," Brebner said.

"That just gives us the incentive to go out and try and win two games and jump Gold Coast on the ladder and (kick) start our season."

With veteran striker Archie Thompson preparing to return to action from a knee reconstruction, now is the right time, Brebner said, for the Victory to set about bridging the eight-point gap between themselves and the competition top two, Adelaide and Brisbane Roar.

"I don't think we're a team that rises to the occasion, we more or less give it all every game and sometimes it's not quite good enough," he said.

"There's probably been games where we felt we could have won it and there's probably been points where we were lucky to pick them up."

"We are where we are."

"We would like to be a little bit further up the league but you can see there's a little bit of a gap coming between the teams now at the top and the bottom."

"We're in the right end of the table and now we just need to keep pushing through."

Brebner said he expects a tough, open contest against Gold Coast who are undefeated since their Round 3 loss to Melbourne.

"They're defensively good, their movement is fantastic and they hit you on the break, so there's a lot of areas we're going to have to watch them," he said.